21. House of Kurds: Only an independent Kurdistan can save what’s left of Iraq from becoming a terror state22. The sectarian myth of Iraq23. Will Iraq or Syria survive? UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on sectarian war & the disastrous ’03 invasion24. Unthinkable thoughts about in the debate about ISIS in Iraq25. Abbas Vali in MedNuçe: Kurds must generate a mutual transitory defense unit

NEWS

1.Rally in Amed demands freedom for Öcalan19 June / ANF NewsTens of thousands of people attended a rally in Amed today calling for peace and the release of Abdullah Öcalan.
The rally was organised by the DÖHK (Democratic Free Women’s Movement).
Addressing the rally, HDP MP Sırrı Süreyya Önder said: “Nobody should forget that as long as Öcalan is held hostage, peace too will be held hostage. When we demand freedom for Öcalan we are advocating peace.”

2. March for freedom of Öcalan in Qamişlo19 June / ANF NewsYoung people in Rojava marched with the slogans of “freedom for Öcalan, status to Kurdistan” in Qamişlo (Qamishli) yesterday. Alongside the hundreds of youths, people of all ages joined the march which started at 6 P.M. The march was organised by the leadership of the Ciwanên Şoreşger “Revolutionary youths”.

3. Buldan and Baluken return from Qandil16 June / KurdishquestionHDP Group chairs Pervin Buldan and Idris Baluken have returned to Turkey after meeting KCK officials in Qandil. Buldan said: “We had a 5 or 6 hour meeting in Qandil at which we evaluated the meetings we had had with Mr Ocalan on 1 and 9 June. We then assessed the meetings we had had with the government. The KCK want concrete steps to be taken and laws to be passed before parliament goes into recess. They do not want the plight of sick prisoners to be used as a bargaining ploy and they want an end to the construction of military bases. The setting up of a monitoring committee is also on the agenda, as you know. The KCK said that if such a body had existed the incidents in Lice would not have occurred.”

4. Turkey sends 400 road tankers of petrol to South Kurdistan20 June / ANF NewsAfter ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) gangs captured Mosul and launched attacks on the Baiji oil refinery, petrol supplies from refineries to south Kurdistan have been reduced and long queues of vehicles have built up at petrol stations.

5. Election threshold lowered to 2 percent in Rojava20 June / ANF NewsCizire Canton’s Legislative Assembly has completed the legislative work that has been carried out for the last 6 months.
The co-chair of the Legislative Assembly of the Canton, Hakem Xelo, said they have accomplished important legislation and replaced the monolithic and racist laws of the Syrian regime with democratic laws. The new legislation also lowers the electoral threshold to 2 per cent.

6. Minibus carrying building materials to military base set alight20 June / ANF NewsA minibus carrying construction materials to a military base in the Hozat district of Dersim province has been set alight by an armed group that stopped the vehicle. Following the incident the Turkish Gendarme took the driver to the Hozat district Gendarmerie where he was questioned.

7. Turkish Kurds hope ISIS offensive will end Turkey’s allowing of jihadists16 June / eKurd“Radical Islamic groups with the knowledge of the Turkish intelligence service recruit and are sending our young kids to the war in Syria from border bases in Turkey’s Kurdish provinces,” Atilla Yazar, head of the Urfa branch of Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD), told Rudaw.
All experts Rudaw spoke to agree that Turkey has tolerated jihadists crossing the border, to support the fight against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria, which is considered a offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been at war with Turkey for 30 years. Now, one of these groups, The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has moved into Iraq and captured the Turkish consulate in Mosul, releasing them one day after.
“Now we hope that the Turks have realized how dangerous these groups are that they’ll stop supporting the anti-Kurdish groups and engage in a dialogue with the Kurds in Syria,” Yazar said.

8. Investigation into Paris murders: focus on MIT responsibility18 June / firatnewsThe investigation concerning the murder of 3 Kurdish women politicians in Paris in January 2013 is now concentrating on the responsibility of the Turkish Intelligence Agency (MIT) for the murders.
French anti-terror magistrate Jeanne Duye, who is leading the investigation, held a meeting with the families of the three women for two hours on 17 June in the Palace of Justice. The French authorities regularly inform the families about the investigation.

10. ECtHR finds Turkey violated freedom of expression17 June / ANF NewsThe European Court of Human Rights has decided that Turkey has violated the freedom of expression. […]
The Court examined the news published in the newspaper Evrensel and the journal Dema Nu, because of which the newspaper and the journal were either censored or confiscated by the state authorities for making propaganda for a terrorist organisation. […]
The court has ordered Turkey to pay a total of 30 thousand euros.

11. Attorney Özkan: No investigations were opened regarding killing of Aras17 June / Dicle NewsIbrahim Aras was massacred two days ago after being hit on the head by a stun grenade or a gas canister fired from a police armoured vehicle. We interviewed with Aras family’s lawyer Vedat Özkan regarding the subject. Attorney Özkan drew attention that there has been no prosecutors in the investigations today. […]
Barrister Özkan added: “Crime scene investigations were not made properly. Skull bones belonging to Ibrahim are still on the ground. The juridicial officials are very slow at probing the incident. It has become 3 days. However, there has been no investigations yet. All these are bringing the question of ‘Are they trying to cover up the incident?’ to our minds.”

12. Protests against the murder of İbrahim Aras17 June / ANF NewsThe killing of İbrahim Aras (15) by Turkish police in Adana has been protested in the Istanbul districts of Sultangazı and Okmeydanı and in the cities of Amed, Çanakkale, and Izmir.
In Sultangazi, supporters of the HDP (People’s Democratic Party) and HDK (People’s Democratic Confederation) youth assembly raised a banner reading “from Berkin, to İbrahim; the murderer is the state”. In the Gazi neighbourhood in the Sultangazi district of Istanbul, youths chanting the slogans “murderer AKP” and “murderer police will be called to account” started to march towards the Cemevi (faith house). […]
In Okmeydanı, clashes occurred between the Turkish police and youths from the YDG-H (patriotic revolutionary youth movement) protesting the murder of İbrahim Aras. Youths threw Molotov cocktails at water cannons and an armoured vehicle was set alight after being hit by a Molotov cocktail. The fire was extinguished by pressurized water from water cannons.

13. Soma miners on wage protest17 June / BianetMiners affiliated with three different mining zones under Soma Mining Co. have launched a protest, saying that the company didn’t pay their wages.
Following the mine disaster that took at least 301 miners’ lives on May 13, the company workers received their wage on May 15. However, as of today, they have yet to receive their next wages due by June 15.

14. Foreign backers re-evaluate Syrian quagmire19 June / Daily starTop Western and Arab security officials have cut the Syrian opposition out of their decision-making process as Islamists that gained momentum in Syria sweep across northern Iraq, threatening U.S., European and Gulf Arab interests.
In parallel, Hezbollah is considering its own partial withdrawal as its base in Lebanon begins to question how many fighters must fall for a never-ending war across the border.

15. Broadcast ban for ISIS17 June / Dicle NewsTurkey’s media watchdog has delivered a court ruling to newspapers, television and websites on June 17, announcing a broadcast and publication ban on reports relating to the kidnappings of Turkish citizens in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
Some 49 members of Turkey’s Mosul Consulate and 31 truck drivers were kidnapped by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham (ISIS), after they seized Mosul late June 9. One of the Turkish drivers managed to escape over the weekend.

16. Amid Iraq crisis, Kurds form new regional government19 June / RudawERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Nine months since the regional parliamentary elections, the Kurdistan Region formed a new government under Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani on Wednesday, ending months of negotiations and brining all parties into a broad-based cabinet.
“The partners in this government will shoulder economic, financial and administrative responsibilities and will help implement all the decisions of the cabinet that will work on the trust of the people of this region,” said Barzani in his opening speech.

18. Iraq conflict: Iraqi Kurd PM Nechirvan Barzani17 June / BBCThe prime minister of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region has told the BBC’s Jim Muir he does not believe the country will stay together, as Sunni extremist militants continue to make territorial gains.
Nechirvan Barzani said it would be “almost impossible” for Iraq to return to the situation that existed before the city of Mosul was captured, and that the various factions needed to “sit down and find a way to live together”.

19. Peshmerga control all Kurdish territories in Iraq17 June / RudawKurdish forces are in control of all their claimed but disputed territories in Nineveh and Kirkuk, but facing a harder task in Diyala which is a stronghold of armed Islamist groups in Iraq, Kurdish officials said.

20. U.N. agency raises disaster designation in Iraq as refugees flood into Kurdistan18 June / Washington PostIRBIL, Iraq — The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF on Wednesday upgraded Iraq’s latest crisis to a level 3 humanitarian disaster — its most severe designation — as U.N. officials said they were scrambling to provide basic services while preparing to cope with an estimated 1.5 million displaced people.
“Now we’re focused on delivering water, food and essential items,” said Colin MacInnes, deputy head of UNICEF in Iraq. The organization has been collaborating with other U.N. and humanitarian agencies to deliver aid.

22. The sectarian myth of Iraq16 June / the GuardianTony Blair has been widely derided for his attempted justification of the 2003 Iraq invasion, and his claim last weekend that he’s blameless over the current turmoil. Unfortunately, though, many of his critics have also bought into a central plank of his argument: that Iraqi society is no more than a motley collection of religions and ethnicities which have been waiting for decades, if not centuries, to slaughter each other and plunge the place into a bloodbath.
The main difference between the two sides seems to be that Blair believes western intervention is the answer; some of his critics say Iraq needed a dictator like Saddam to hold the nation together. Neither side, though, has yet produced historical evidence of significant communal fighting between Iraq’s religions, sects, ethnicities or nationalities.

23. Will Iraq or Syria survive? UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on sectarian war & the disastrous ’03 invasion18 June / Democracy nowAs a Sunni militancy overtakes large parts of Iraq, former U.N.-Arab League special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi joins us to discuss the escalating Iraqi conflict, the long-term impact of the 2003 U.S. invasion, and the crisis in neighboring Syria. A former Algerian freedom fighter who went on to become Algeria’s foreign minister, Brahimi has been deeply involved in Middle Eastern diplomacy for decades.

24. Unthinkable thoughts about in the debate about ISIS in Iraq
15 June 2014 / CommondreamsThis week Iraq emerged from the recesses of American memory and became a hot topic of conversation. Alarming headlines about ISIS’s “takeover” of Mosul and their march towards Baghdad have elicited a number of reactions: The most conservative call for direct US military action against ISIS to ensure that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki remains stable in Baghdad. The most liberal lament the ongoing violence and divisions in Iraqi society caused by the US occupation; though they make no attempt distinguish between the violence of ISIS and the violence of the Maliki government. […]
This loose coalition of militias—from the tribal militias in Fallujah, to Baathist militias like Naqshabandi, and Islamist groups like ISIS—have come to embody the hopes and aspirations of Sunnis in Iraq to one day be free of Maliki’s oppression. For them there is no other option, no other future is imaginable, and there is no turning back.

25. Abbas Vali in MedNuçe: Kurds must generate a mutual transitory defense unit17 June / Dicle NewsWhile the gangs of Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) are signing new massacres in Iraq for all the world to see, the chaos situation in the region is gestating to new librations in all the Middle East.
The Peshmergas forces, army of Federal Kurdistan Region, who stopped the Kirkuk march of ISIS, have become the first indication of this. The actual partnership of Peshmergas forces and People’s Defense Units (YPG), army of Rojava Democratic Autonomous Cantons, at the border of Iraq-Syria has become another indication of these new librations in the region.
Prof. Dr. Abbas Vali noted: “Kurds are in an advantageous situation. They must generate a mutual transitory defense unit to evaluate this advantageous situation well. All the powers and sides, who have relations with Iraq and regional countries, have to revise their policies.”

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Weekly News Briefing

Jeremy Corbyn issues statement of support for the National Demo

Message from Jeremy Corbyn to Kurdish national demonstration London 6/3/16:
“I’m sorry not to be able to be with you today, but I send a message of solidarity with today’s demonstration, and with the Kurdish people, under sustained attack across the Middle East.
The conflict in Syria has been the trigger for an onslaught against the Kurdish people, who are defending their autonomy and their rights.
We are watching closely the alarming events that have been unfolding in Turkey in recent weeks, including the killing of civilians and destruction of Kurdish homes.
Any negotiated settlement of the Syrian conflict must include peace and justice for the Kurds, including in Turkey. And the Turkish government needs as a matter of urgency to restart the peace process with the Kurds and respect the rights of all its people.
We call for an end to repression of the Kurds and justice for the Kurdish people throughout the Middle East.”